Where Should You Use React for Web Development?

If you landed on this blog post, you definitely would want to use React.js for web development projects. However, the question is – is React a good choice for your next project?

Now, that is an extremely important question. And if your mind is baffled with so many technologies around the corner, it's completely fine. Because, the truth is, there ARE a plethora of web development frameworks vying for your attention. Hence, it depends on you, the developer or an organization, to dig deep into the research. What’s even important is hiring the right development company.

The ball is in our court now, Third Rock Techkno; to convince you why should, you choose React.js for web development. And we would like to start with a simple statistic.

Right now, over 92,00,000 websites on the web that use React.js for their development.

Taking Inspirations from React Usage Cases

An interesting thing, the most popular site – Netflix, is your biggest proof of the ease and interactivity React.js brings. In 2015, Netflix brought a major transformation by using React for their front-end and re-evaluated their UI completely. And in their official post, they listed three main reasons for choosing React – high performance, modularity, and loading speed. Additionally, it’s a single-page application (SPA). That is a huge plus point if you want to choose to React for web app development.

This brings us to our next segment. Choosing the right programming framework is as important as selecting it for a specific project.

Which Specific Projects Need React.js?

React has an extensive JavaScript library for building user interfaces. However, not every project requires or should use React. React is a very powerful tool when used in conjunction with flux architecture and Mobx for state management. Writing a front-end web app in JavaScript would be the correct choice if the application is fairly simple.

React.js for web development would be a great choice if your project has many elements that require different, often-changing states. These could be expanding/collapsing navigation items, open/close accordions, interactive elements like inputs and links, login, and access, and so on. If your project uses React for the user interface, you can save time by hiring a React.js web developer to automate and simplify.

It’s designed to help you build interfaces that are as predictable and reliable as the code that creates them. It allows you to define users of your app and structure it in a way that is easy to reason about. The result is an interface that can change the state at any given time based on all the various inputs.  It adapts to all the changes occurring in the system—without you having to write too much code. Hence, some of the most prominent sectors where you can use React.js for web development are:

• E-learning websites
• Blogs
• Promotional websites
• Job boards and forums
• Media sharing platforms and galleries
• Portfolios and Business Directories
• Rating Websites, Auction sites, and Coupon sites

The Things We Love About React for Web App Development

The key value of React is the ease with which it enables a developer to build applications and deploy them to every platform. React is extremely fast and lightweight and because it uses a true component-oriented architecture, something we also care about.

React Native Comes as a Bonus

Using the React library also lands you an added bonus. With React.js, you can easily create mobile apps with React Native too. They both have a few differences. However, by compiling the JavaScript to native code, you can develop mobile apps that feel platform-intensive.

Server-side Rendering

Server-side Rendering means that your site will render client-side on all devices. It helps in extending their functionality and improving their performance across browser platforms. It creates the markup that is ready to render in a browser immediately after being sent to the server. It does not require any additional client-side processing or page rendering. This is important for speed and SEO.

Extensive Components

React is a library that allows you to build user interfaces by composing different kinds of widgets. Each of them, designed to perform a particular task. It provides functions that you can use to define the appearance and behavior of these widgets. This is the biggest reason why so many popular sites like Airbnb and Instagram use ReactJS for web development. You can change the appearance of individual components in your app by using these functions. This will help you create a complex app in a short span of time. React for web development embraces stateless, declarative, and efficient user interfaces. This means that developers are free to work on the same project without conflicts.

Virtual DOM

When you’re developing a new form, it’s crucial to consider performance. You might be surprised how much DOM manipulation can affect the response time of a web application. Updating the DOM can be one of the main performance bottlenecks for web applications. React solves this problem by rendering the view as close to real-time as possible as one of its best features for choosing React for your next project. Changes are diffed against the virtual DOM and then applied to the DOM. React only uses a small amount of memory and makes changes quickly while allowing the user to interact with the site without delay.

Flux and Redux

Let's talk about the architecture of flux architecture used in React.js for web app development. You can begin with the idea of unidirectional data flow. This means that if you have an array of items in your store, they are going to be updated depending on what happened in the dispatcher. Then you have a series of actions orchestrated by a central dispatcher. You can use these actions to update a set of stores. Then you go to the views and update them based on what happened in those stores.

Dynamic Web Pages

With the help of interactive elements and dynamic content, libraries can become more engaging and useful to the user. However, having a dynamic and interactive site is not as simple as implementing HTML and JS. Creating such a solution requires cutting-edge technology like ReactJS. The redrawing operation must be optimized for performance in order to maintain an engaging user experience. React doesn’t need to redraw from the scratch, it only draws the changed nodes. Consequently, the users get an immediate reaction to any manipulation.

We hope we convinced you to choose React.js for a web development project. Now, let’s get into the nitty-gritty and technicalities about the projects where you can use React.js.

The Best Projects Using React.js for Web App Development

React’s ability to use the same code for both server-side and client-side is an extremely resource-intensive process. In cases like facing bad internet connection, React allows to exceed the normal UX speed curve of 2 seconds!

Social Platforms

Long-term maintenance is the biggest concern while developing a social platform. That’s why Facebook switched to a SPA after starting out as a dynamic website. Using server-side content injection can help respond to every user request. We developed a similar app for social clubbing called Maxwell. The app became integral in connecting private clubs with people and created its own brand. However, a static SPA (single page application) will only refresh the elements that have been changed. This process saves additional resources on the client browser, improving application performance.

Server-side rendering boosts SEO and sharing

A simple SPA renders on the client-side before the entire page loads. After rendering the JS code from the server, the client-side script renders the content of the page. When a user requests a preview, it doesn’t accept the JS code and generates a plain page preview. Websites can't load all the way if your SPA doesn't change. So, if you have a site that loads the same page over and over again, only the part of the page that changes when a user clicks a link will be loaded. Saving additional HTTP requests will improve application performance with React for web app development.

Web sockets enhance the real-time processing

A web app needs real-time notifications to be successful. The most effective is with Socket.io and React. Socket.io enables developers to create real-time applications that can communicate with each other in near-real-time. The server will be able to receive real-time data from the client over the same connection. One of the key features of this connection is to be able to broadcast data in real-time. This means there will always be a socket for each client. It will allow data to be passed back and forth between them and the server.

Dashboards

Without a doubt, dashboards and data visualization tools are ideal use-cases for React. They are essential for a user to be able to understand the data, and they often serve as a tool for BI and machine learning. However, many developers prefer to use some third-party tools. For a React-based dashboard, Ant. design and Airframe React are excellent tools.

Reusable Components

With React, you have the freedom to build reusable, cross-platform user interface components that can be used anywhere. This means you don't need to build these components from scratch every time. The ideas of modularity and reusability are the guiding principles.

Quick UI Updates

A dashboard or a data visualization screen should be constantly updated and updated to support the latest numbers. React for web development has a real-time update feature that allows you to render components as needed and ensure an immediate update of the UI. The Virtual DOM takes care of optimizing this process and ensures that your app will always be up-to-date.

E-commerce Stores

You can easily integrate React for UI in your eCommerce application. Adopting this design pattern allows you to build reusable components. React helps you incorporate its “Atomic Design" to create a solid foundation for all of your other elements. The principle works on assigning specific independence to each component.

Easy Maintenance with Reusable Components

Maintaining an e-commerce or retail store is easier with React for web app development. It allows the developer to build a component once and reuse it in the app numerous times. You don't have to write the code again, and reusability also saves money and time. This also helps in reducing the duplicate codes, resulting in longer maintenance.

Higher Performance with State Management

When building an e-commerce site with React.js, you need to make sure that the application is able to handle various actions. These actions include "what items are available?, "what items a user has on his wish list?" and "when a user adds a cart item." In order to handle those actions, you need to manage your application's state that allows you to keep track of data.

Cross-Platform Mobile Apps

You've decided to use React for your project. After all, you've got the same code that you used on the web, and it already works great. But now you can easily make a mobile app using React Native. The same code doesn't work on both platforms, but the same developer who wrote the code used for the web can write it again for the app platform.

We are a team of expert developers, testers and business consultants who strive to deliver nothing but the best. Planning to build a completely secure and efficient React app? 'Hire ReactJS Developers'.

Why Third Rock Techkno Should be your Preferred Choice for React Web Development?

If you’re still not sure whether React is the right fit for your project, we’re happy to guide you. We can sit down and take you through the process of creating a requirements document and planning out the best solution for you. We’ve worked with React in projects ranging from single-page sites to large-scale CMS solutions. Hence, we know the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.

If you are more inclined towards developing a mobile app instead of a web app, we can sort it out for you. You can hire web developers for React.js and mobile app developers for React Native from Third Rock Techkno. Let’s start a new project today!

Krunal Shah

Krunal Shah is the CTO and Co-founder at Third Rock Techkno. With extensive experience gained over a decade, Krunal helps his clients build software solutions that stand out in the industry and are lighter on the pocket.

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